National (International?) Siblings Day. Yaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyy I don't feel depressed and lonely at all being an only child...

Or having siblings that you do not get on with at all. My sister and I do not talk, and frankly I miss what could have been.

Yeah for sure. I mean, I get it, some "Days" just won't work for everyone, and I am truly pleased I have so many friends with special bonds with their siblings. Doesn't stop me from wanting to have a pity party though!

WHAT THE fork IS THIS SIBLINGS DAY shiitake. My sister, who for a thousand reasons is the one person who if I saw on fire I would think twice about pissing on, sent me this huge, syrupy, obviously-took-twelve-hours-to-formulate-but-still-full-of-barbs thing about how much she loves me. Uh, is that why now nobody in the family has talked to us since January, and we had to move after all the bullshiitake and thieving and etc, because you love me so much? As we say in Brazil, go take a bath. ^spits^CQ, I wish you were my sibling. My SOUL SIBLING

ETA: the creepy FB douchebag guy story continues....after a week he finally figured out how to unblock me and friended me. and immediately posted on my wall, gr. After all this rigamarole, he announced he is making a group for his publication and he wants me to admin it. Er, do you realize I consider your publication absolute trash? I am tempted to say yes to do some internal sabotage but alas, I cannot. what the hell, people.

I think facebook needs a family category for chosen family. I have two sisters listed on Facebook. Only one is actually family but I feel like my relationship with the other one is what a sisterly relationship should be.

WHAT THE fork IS THIS SIBLINGS DAY shiitake. My sister, who for a thousand reasons is the one person who if I saw on fire I would think twice about pissing on, sent me this huge, syrupy, obviously-took-twelve-hours-to-formulate-but-still-full-of-barbs thing about how much she loves me. Uh, is that why now nobody in the family has talked to us since January, and we had to move after all the bullshiitake and thieving and etc, because you love me so much? As we say in Brazil, go take a bath. ^spits^CQ, I wish you were my sibling. My SOUL SIBLING

<33

Is "go take a bath" like "go fork yourself"? LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT.

_________________Man, fork the gender card, imma come at you with the whole damned gender deck. - Olives Did you ever think that, like, YOU are a sexy costume FOR a diva cup? - solipsistnationblog!FB!

I'm with you guys in regards to sibling day. I have four of them, and we all have veeeeery different relationships with each other, so I just opted to say nothing at all. I think it was for the best, since none of them posted anything either. Whew.

Yeah, everyone was posting pictures of their siblings yesterday, so I posted a blank polaroid. I have one of my friends listed as my sister, and she posted a photo of me. Now I feel like maybe I should have posted one of her. I hope she's not offended that I forgot she's my fake sister!

thank you 8ball, for saying that. I never heard of this crapola sibling shiitake, i thought it was just me. Mother's day, father's day, okay, anything else, nope, i'm sorry, but (can i say this) who cares?

Yes, CQ, go take a bath is a less profane way of telling someone to go to hell. (or to fork themselves, in hell. or whatever. i love English, few languages match its pleasurable profanities. But then again, in Portuguese instead of saying we're going to go drop a deuce, we say we're going to go send a fax, so sometimes it's a close call [no i don't know what they said before there were faxes])

Crapola sibling shiitake indeed. I love my sister, and have several friends whom I love just as dearly, but the only regard in which I'm thankful for my dirtbag brother is the fact that he stays the fork away from me and everyone I care about. (Also: thank you for giving me my new favorite phrase!)

My sister's partner turned 40 yesterday and she threw a party for that, so I'm sure she didn't even notice "sibling day" or whatever. Which was fine by me, because I didn't post anything either.

The whole thing keeps making me think about friends whose relationships are, for various very good reasons, complicated with their siblings. I hope they're doing OK, but I also feel a little weird/overstepping reaching out to them just based on that.

i'm getting notifications that my cousin tagged me in a photo, and that my sisters commented on it, but then when i click the notifications, i see a big image of a thumb with a bandage on it and the text "Sorry, this page isn't available // The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed." but the comments still keep coming.

even if a photo is posted within a friends group you're not a member of, if you're tagged, you're usually automatically added to be able to view it, right? this is so weird.

A friend of mine for whom linguistical pedantry is a way of life is complaining on FB about the use of certain popular phrases, while blatantly misusing words like "legitimately" and "random". It is taking every ounce of my restraint not to comment. This is also someone who was making racially ignorant comments about a topic on which he is widely considered an expert and has letters after his name to back it up.

I just...I can't even.. *cough*

_________________Man, fork the gender card, imma come at you with the whole damned gender deck. - Olives Did you ever think that, like, YOU are a sexy costume FOR a diva cup? - solipsistnationblog!FB!

A friend of mine for whom linguistical pedantry is a way of life is complaining on FB about the use of certain popular phrases, while blatantly misusing words like "legitimately" and "random". It is taking every ounce of my restraint not to comment. This is also someone who was making racially ignorant comments about a topic on which he is widely considered an expert and has letters after his name to back it up.

I just...I can't even.. *cough*

I admire your restraint, CQ! Those are the times I have to hit "hide" (unless I'm in the mood to engage and/or can't help myself).

I have a not wholly dissimilar problem with a friend who fancies herself a writer, but has absolutely no talent (and a terrifyingly weak grasp of basic grammar, syntax, and composition). She has a job in the non-profit sector, but considers writing her true vocation, and it is both embarrassing and painful to read her status updates about her "novel," let alone the tortured prose she posts on her blog. When I say her writing is terrible, I mean truly, deeply bad: weird, pretentious (and often incorrect) vocabulary, incomprehensible syntax, unclear subjects, misplaced modifiers, randomly deployed prepositions all over the place, and a level of ellipsis abuse that is...probably...illegal...or should be. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, her writing is not just plain terrible, it's fancy terrible; it's terrible with raisins in it.

She asked me to look at something she's working on and I had to say I was too busy, because A. life is too short to read horrible prose for free, and B. it would have been really awkward to give her honest feedback. When I get a freshman who writes this badly, I meet with them multiple times and refer them to the university's writing center, but I can hardly do that with a woman in her late thirties who genuinely imagines she can write. I've actually considered finding a way to anonymously suggest that if she's really attached to the idea, she should enroll in a basic writing workshop, since even the best writers can always use improvement. But she'd probably just be offended and not act on the suggestion, which is part of what drives me so crazy about the whole thing. She seems to labor under the naive misapprehension idea that writing is some sort of organic process that just "happens," which is not only wrong, but insulting to actual writers, all of whom will tell you that producing good prose is hard, concentrated work. (And don't even get me started on the whole NaNoWriMo thing. GAAAH.)

Anyway, I've recently had to hide her because it's just too mortifying to see her poorly written posts about being a writer. She's a nice person, but she is barking up the wrong tree, and I don't want to be the one to tell her so. And with the semester drawing to an end, I have a lot of student papers coming in, so I'll have all the problematic writing I can handle. (But at least I'm getting paid to read it!)

People DO use random wrong all the time, but if I complained about it I'd have to stop doing it myself.

I recently found a memo that I wrote myself about a decade ago about how terrible it is to misuse the word "random". I don't even remember writing it, but obviously I did, and it's such a me-ten-years-ago thing to have done.

_________________Man, fork the gender card, imma come at you with the whole damned gender deck. - Olives Did you ever think that, like, YOU are a sexy costume FOR a diva cup? - solipsistnationblog!FB!

I would just like to take this moment to state that I am not this person in question, but I think I might change my CV to include this.

@Desdemona, i think the key to this is an email from NaNoWriMo stating that NaNo now requires extra-talented writers to take a pimp-my-style course at the local community college. If it comes from NaNo, it may be seen as the word of god. You could even sign it JK Rowling.

I would just like to take this moment to state that I am not this person in question, but I think I might change my CV to include this.

+ 1 yummy!

torque wrote:

@Desdemona, i think the key to this is an email from NaNoWriMo stating that NaNo now requires extra-talented writers to take a pimp-my-style course at the local community college. If it comes from NaNo, it may be seen as the word of god. You could even sign it JK Rowling.